Planters who lost the emancipation battle in 1794 won legal revenge by 1800

Evidence

In the early 1790s Moreau and his allies had advocated the formation of “particular laws” for the colonies as a way to prevent the granting of rights to free-coloreds, and the possibility of a reform or elimination of slavery. They had failed to stop the application of the universalist principles of the Revolution in Saint-Domingue; their political ideology had been roundly defeated in 1794. In 1800, however, after years of criticizing emancipation, the planters and their supporters had their revenge. Bonaparte’s new constitution decreed that because of the difference in the “nature of things and the climate,” the colonies were to be governed by “special laws.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 854